HP 2133 Lubuntu: chrome9 screen driver conflicts with wifi

Question

What I have:

Lubuntu 16.10 running on HP 2133.

First, fixed wifi issue installing firmware-b43 as suggested here: No Wifi with Lubuntu 14.04 on HP Netbook

Next, tried to improve the screen resolution as it stuck on 640x480. Installed openchrome as suggested here How to set up VIA chrome9 screen driver?

So what i have is screen resolution improved (1024x768), but wifi disappeared. Interestingly, but wifi recovers once chrome9 is purged.

lspci says:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 [Chrome 9 HC] (rev 01)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Limited BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

So, in the other words, I either have wifi or normal screen resolution.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I am the developer of OpenChrome DDX graphics device driver. I am responsible for breaking the code of OpenChrome DDX Version 0.5 that inadvertently disabled HP 2133's WLAN. Someone else complained about the same issue back in December 2016, and the issue was resolved in Version 0.6 (March 2017). At the time of Version 0.5 release, I did not have HP 2133 for testing, so had no way to avoid breaking the code. VIA never made VN896 chipset graphics hardware programming guide public (they did it for the newer stuff like VX800 chipset). If you want a fix, you will likely have to compile the latest OpenChrome code from the code repository and install it.

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/openchrome-users/2016-February/007237.html

Please note that Canonical rarely fixes serious bugs during the support period of the OS, and I think the bug is present even with Lubuntu 17.04. I will assume Lubuntu 16.04.3 HWE (Hardware Enablement) or Lubuntu 17.10 should resolve the issue.

Regards,

Kevin Brace

The OpenChrome Project maintainer / developer